THIS IS THE END - THE SHOW MUST GOES ON
(UN)PUBLISHED CLICHÉS
The essential question, I think, is its aim. Why show anonymous photographs at a time when the digital image seems to rule supreme?
Perhaps because the infinite possibilities of anonymous images and the casualness with which they were taken make them an inexhaustible source of energy and surprise. They are a condensed user’s manual for subverting all photographic practices and, in the end, a brotherly tribute to humanity.
Anonymous photographs weren’t meant to be seductive, or even thought about, and this is perhaps what is missing in contemporary photography. Their sole aim was to justify a fleeting moment, an existence, to mechanically leave a trace for future generations, chemical imprints on paper, "latent images" of ourselves via which our aura can endure in other people’s memories.
I have always been surprised by anonymous photographs, by that quality inherent in all “found” photographs: a visceral attachment to their time and that aerial detachment that makes them timeless objects of reflection – and perhaps quite simply because they are an amateur practice.
They transcend their own moment.
The seminal idea of this project was never to build up a collection that could acquire status and value, but to explore an idea of its contemporaneity. To quote Lavoisier: "nothing is lost, nothing is created, and everything is transformed.” Images of the past already exist in images of the present.
The prime focus of this curatorial project is not the process of accumulation but the mechanism of recognition, the way in which it makes us reconsider the concept of beauty. To look at an anonymous photograph is to explore all the paths of the soul, to recognise beauty where one’s personal history enables us to see it and others cannot. It is the logic of the beauty belonging to each individual that fascinates me rather than the process of collection and identification.
The digital medium and the blog were the immediate choices. Quite simply because I considered it important to talk about ancient photography with current promotional tools, and because the blog allows one to distil unidentified visual objects drop by drop. And finally because no exhibition space would have shown these images 365 days ago… Slumbering within us all there is that black flag saying: "If you’re not given space, take it!"
This project is now reaching the end of its 365-day cycle. For 365 days, 365 anonymous photographs have proved that the photographic object is in no way contradicted by its digital representation.
The aim was never to create an “endless story” but to confront a point of view. All this would have lost its meaning if it had been otherwise. And when the exhibition ends, AAnonymes will remain ad vitam digitae in the great collective memory of Internet.
Photography is a combat sport.
This is only a beginning.
The show must goes on.
Romaric Tisserand
Arcachon, 19 August 2010